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This prestigious ballet company for years offered headphones with audio descriptions so that visually impaired audience members could follow the action on stage. Presently, in a groundbreaking production, the complete crowd will listen to such commentary within a production that investigates how blindness can transform our perceptions to sensation, music and narrative.

Blind Creator Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a blind artist, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in creating a recent Royal Ballet work that will premiere on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, the artist is guided by a desire to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can offer an unique type of understanding for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the score, establishes the heart of the production on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and musical theater for everyone" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is concentrating on "radical accessibility – encouraging creators and viewers to discover ballet in transformative innovative methods," he stated.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Work

The fresh production is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, each partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this commission, stated: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of inclusion. After a ten years, we're extending that idea deeper to examine how challenged perspectives can mold our creative medium, and encourage viewers of diverse capacities and experiences to encounter ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with the artist in Canada and Australia, the curator understood that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s descriptive audio felt it helped them comprehend ballet, which can appear so unclear.

Inspiring Partnership Between Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mostly for sighted people". But the dancer has realized that it actually "involves a lot of sensation and emotions" and taps into senses, "sight-based and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s personal story of once getting lost on his way home and depending on the sun to guide his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," Malcomson explained.

"It was during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a great assistant to me. The sun could be a good representation. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Unique Connection with Dance

Healey, an assistant professor of disability studies at the Toronto university, commented: "Blindness and lacking sight invites a dynamic connection with dance in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's bond with their body and motion."

In partnering with the performers, the artist was seeking to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not available through looking," she said. "I converse with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breath is, what they consider, how their muscles are sensing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] clothing, lighting, scenery and audio designers, the viewpoints and innovation of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, develop a connection through our affection of movement and dance. It is this innovation and passion that I strive to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the perceptions directed by blindness."

She noted: "Even though the view of the ballet, the gorgeous display, is present before the patrons, there is so much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is welcoming seeing and blind audience members both into the hidden. What I wish is that, when patrons exit, they sense performance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and listening to the understandings of, visual impairment in new and vibrant ways."

Composer The Composer on Sound Narration

The composer, whose recordings have accumulated more than billions of online plays, stated the audio descriptions formed a relationship between visual impairment and sight "by means of a musical landscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He noted: "This isn't just a description of a production. It is performance."

World Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s international partners for World Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will furthermore offer entry to exclusive material, rehearsals and recently created productions – broadcast in real-time via online channels.